„Was it for this the clay grew tall?”
Wilfred Owen’s aesthetic sensitivity in the face of war and violence
Institute of Oriental Studies, Jagiellonian University
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go1. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?2
Introduction: Owen’s early poems and initial inspirations
Wilfred Owen, exceptional in his „ability to project the feeling of shock and dark emptiness”3, reached his poetic peak when exposing the horrifying realities of the First World War. He was once, however, as is not commonly known, far more pre- occupied with lanterns and huts. Owen, aged five at the time, already displayed a keen interest in literature and an aptitude for writing. A close relationship with his mother led to numerous letters and cards, the earliest of which, written at the aforementioned age, demonstrates a surprisingly formal and adult-like style despite the undeniably trivial context: „my dear mother i no that you have got there safely.
1 S. Sassoon, Suicide in the Trenches [in:] War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Dover Publications, New York 2004, p. 64.
2 W. Owen, Exposure [in:] Men Who March Away, ed. I. M. Parsons, Heinemann Educational Books, London 1965, p. 51.
3 A Treasury of Great Poems English and American, ed. L. Untermeyer, Simon and Schuster, New York 1955, p. 1173.
We are making huts. I have got a lantern, and we are lighting them up to-night. With love from Wilfred I remain your loving son Wilfred”4. More importantly, as a young teenager, inspired by his stay in the Cheshire hamlet of Broxton in 19045, Owen began writing poetry. His brother, Harold, writes: „[I]t was in Broxton […] among the fern and bracken and the little hills […] that the poetry in Wilfred, with gentle pushings, without hurt, began to bud, and not on the battlefields of France”6. Even at this young age, some key elements of his poetic style already began to surface. It was here that he developed a very Romantic-like fascination with nature – „[W]as there not Broxton Hill for my uplifting, whose bluebells, it may be […] fitted me for my job”7. Later, in a fragmentary poem drafted in 1914, Owen wrote „that his
»poethood« had been born at Broxton in darkness and disobedience, »Suckled« by the moon, his poetic mother”8. He retained these themes of „darkness and disobe- dience” and continued building upon them. Perhaps the eleven year-old poet slip- ped out of the house to view the landscape by moonlight – little did he know that his rebellious nature would one day make him a prominent figure of opposition to the First World War.
Owen was particularly inspired by Romantic poetry, notably the works of John Keats and William Wordsworth. By 1908 his interest in Wordsworth led to a newly found understanding of poetry, or as Owen himself noted: „[T]he value of poetry lay in its power to elevate the mind above the common sphere”9. In a letter to his mother from 1911 he quotes the preface of Keats’s Endymion, and through this medium compares his personality to that of the famous poet. The preface describes his char- acter as undecided, his way of life as uncertain and his ambition thick-sighted10. Just a year earlier, in Written in a Wood, September 191011, Owen writes in a very Keatsian style, alive with sensual imagery and descriptions that highlight the picturesque but simultaneously dangerous qualities of nature:
Full ninety autumns bath this ancient beech Helped with its myriad leafy tongues to swell The dirges of the deep-toned western gale, And ninety times hath all its power of speech Been stricken dumb, at sound of winter’s yell. (ll. 1‒5)
4 D. Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: A New Biography, Orion Books, London 2003, p. 16.
5 Cf. ibidem, p. 31.
6 Ibidem.
7 Ibidem, p. 32.
8 Ibidem, p. 32.
9 Ibidem, p. 59.
10 Cf. J. Najarian, „Greater Love”: Wilfred Owen, Keats and a Tradition of Desire, „Twentieth Century Literature” 2001, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 23‒24.
11 W. Owen, The Complete Wilfred Owen, Bybliotech, 2013.
Like Keats, Owen also refers to Greek mythology, notably to Adonis, a symbol of beauty and desire: „Since Adonis, no more strong and hale, / Might have rejoiced to linger here and teach / His thoughts in sonnets to the listening dell” (ll. 6‒8). This is most probably a reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s elegy for Keats, entitled Adon- ais12, in which Shelley writes: „I weep for Adonais-he is dead! / O, weep for Adonais!
though our tears / Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!” (ll. 1‒3). In the poem’s final verse, Owen directly cites Keats as his primary source of inspiration.
Ninety years have passed since the poet’s death, but his influence will continue to live on, unaffected by the unforgiving laws of nature: „Ah, ninety times again, when au- tumn rots / Shall birds and leaves be mute and all unseen, / Yet shall I see fair Keats, and hear his lyre” (ll. 12‒14).
Although his style may have been somewhat derivative during his adolescence, Owen’s tendency to draw inspiration from the works of Romantic poets would lead to much greater things. Despite his young age, Owen rejects simple words and phrases, and develops his fondness for what he later called „Fine Language”13. The Romantic depictions of nature he composed as a teenager, though initially experi- ments, would later evolve into powerful and multifaceted portrayals of the terrifying force of the environment, of which the destructive rain and mud in The Sentry are fine examples. The poem begins with the following excerpt:
We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime, Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour, Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and sour. (ll. 1‒7)
Here Owen stresses the unique, harsh conditions soldiers had to endure in the trenches. The dug-out, in theory designed as a means of providing protection from danger, instead „seems to attract it, exposing the soldiers to the hellishness of com- bat, the hostility of nature and of the dead, whose curse can almost be felt in the air”14. Nature becomes a terrifying force, an additional foe of immense proportion.
Rain does not simply fall in the trenches, it constantly gutters down in waterfalls of slime – an immediate danger to one’s health or even life (drowning in mud was not uncommon). Additionally, it overpowers man-made structures, rendering them unusable – this concept reflects the Romantic ideal that nature will prevail over the transient creations of man. The poem continues as follows:
12 S. T. Coleridge, P. B. Shelley, J. Keats, The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. J. Grigg, Phildelphia 1831, p. 159.
13 D. Hibberd, op. cit., p. 48.
14 A. Kędzierska, Issac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen: A Study In the Poetry of World War I, Maria Curie- Skłodowska University Press, Lublin 1995, p. 80.
There we herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last,–
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And sploshing in the flood, deluging muck –
The sentry’s body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. (ll. 11‒17)
Through simple onomatopoeia and repetition Owen stresses the sudden, clumsy nature of the fall. The poet suggests that there is nothing grandiose or heroic in being wounded – the body rumbles inertly down the steps, „sloshing” and „thump- ing” against their surface like a lifeless puppet. This image is enhanced by constant references to the endless quantities of mud, a seemingly irrelevant substance that becomes a vital part of the poem, as if it were an additional character – ever-changing in its physical form, like the ranks of the enemy’s forces. Further on Owen describes the sentry’s eyes as „huge bulge-eyed squids”, an expression bearing similarity to his description of mud as „an octopus of sucking clay”15 found in a letter to his mother.
These descriptions showcase Owen’s ability to recall simple events and enrich them with creative imagery, thereby momentarily transporting the reader into an alien, monstrous reality and conveying the horrors he witnessed much more effectively.
Petrifying faces, nightmarish figures
At the age of eighteen Owen managed to earn a place at London University. How- ever, in Edwardian England, standard education was only provided until the age of 12 and his family did not possess sufficient funds to pay for the studies. This led to his employment as a vicar’s assistant at Dunsden between the ages of 18 and 20.16 One poem most probably written during his stay at the vicarage, Supposed Confes- sions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind in Dejection17, confirms Owen’ persistently keen interest in Romantic poetry. The title is almost identical to Tennyson’s Supposed Con- fessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind. Here Owen references the myth of Perseus and his battle with the Gorgon, „a creature of aspect so terrible, that those who saw her turned at once into stone.”18 In the composition he records himself „being visited on autumn nights and even in daylight by Despondency, a Gorgon-like figure, pale, beautiful and horrifying”19. Unlike Perseus, he does not see the creature’s reflection, but instead experiences the complete dread of her bloodcurdling glare:
15 Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale, BBC One Documentary, 2007.
16 Ibidem.
17 D. Hibberd, op. cit., pp. 82‒83.
18 H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005, p. 22.
19 D. Hibberd, op. cit., p. 82.
But, face to face, she fixed on me her stare:
Woe, woe, my blood has never moved since then;
Down-dragged like corpse in sucking, slimy fen, I sank to feel the breath of that Despair. (ll. 25‒28)
Owen may have been experiencing horrific nightmares at the time; the poem’s title and visceral descriptions certainly point towards a real experience. He may have chosen poetry as a form of self-therapy, a medium in which to personify the terrors imposed by his condition. This theory can be further supported by the notion that
„a face so horrible that the dreamer is reduced to helpless, stony terror, is not a pecu- liarity of any age or race”20, which suggests that even the original tale of the Gorgon may have been created as a result of night terrors. In fact, petrifying faces were to become a recurring image in Owen’s poetry. In Dulce et Decorum Est21 a soldier dies in a fog of gas – „[…] the white eyes writhing in his face, / His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”.
Decadent influences
In 1914, during his stay in France, Owen’s influences began to change. His fondness for imitating and drawing from the English Romantics was to be combined with the style of the French Decadents. Claiming that „morality and ideals were out of date”22, the Decadents chose to search for beauty in its purist form, exploring even the darkest depths of the human mind. The poem Long Ages Past23, written at some point in 1914, was most probably Owen’s first attempt at incorporating elements of this new style into his poetry. In the poem Owen describes a painted idol, at first imagined as a statue. The figure enjoys the sacrifice committed in its name, it enjoys
„smiling at the noise of killing”, very much like the „wretches” that Owen would later refer to in his Apologia Pro Poemate Meo24:
Long ages past in Egypt thou wert worshipped…
Thy feet were dark with blood of sacrifice.
From dawn to midnight, O my painted idol, Thou satest smiling, and the noise of killing Was harp and timbrel in thy pale ears. (ll. 1é5)
The statue then becomes a king’s mad slave in ancient Persia: „Thou slewest women and thy pining lovers / And on thy lips the stain of crimson blood / And on thy brow the pallor of their death” (ll. 13‒15). Owen’s imagery had never before been so
20 H. J. Rose, op. cit., p. 22.
21 Men Who March Away…, p. 64.
22 D. Hibberd, op. cit., p. 171.
23 Ibidem, p. 183.
24 Poetry of the First World War, ed. T. Kendall, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, pp. 160‒161.
ominous, Long Ages Past clearly demonstrates his attempts at experimenting with this controversial style, thereby gaining invaluable experience in describing horrific, brutal events that would later become a common occurrence in his vicinity. Owen’s obsession with petrifying faces can also be found in this poem: „Finally the image is generalised into a beautiful, terrible face of »wild desire, of pain, of bitter pleasure« […], the face of a fatal lover, a Gorgon, deathly white, with blood-red lips and terrible eyes”25.
During the war, Owen’s attempts at revealing „the truth untold” depended heav- ily on his often shocking depictions of the harsh reality on the battlefield. However, the poet also took great interest in the influence of war on the human mind. Perhaps his interest in Decadent poetry had a great influence on A Terre (Being the Philosophy of Many Soldiers)26. The poem begins with „a visit to the world of the sick, that is to say, to a world singled out and fenced from reality”27:
Sit on the bed; I’m blind, and three parts shell, Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall.
Both arms have mutinied against me - brutes.
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.
I tried to peg out soldierly - no use!
One dies of war like any old disease.
This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.
I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.
My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back In scarlet shreds. (That’s for your poetry book.) (ll. 1‒10)
This description of a blind, crippled man, with his malformed, useless body is per- haps one of the most troubling in any of his poems. The depicted soldier contem- plates the fact that he will never regain control over his limbs. Even if he did, the
„dehumanizing power of war” would have already overwhelmed his mind28, thereby making his existence insufferable even with an apparently functional body – „Its [the] impact [of war], depriving man almost completely of his spirituality, [that]
reduces him to a mutilated organism which can function only as an assortment of numerous bodily particulars”29. Instead of asking „What is war?” Owen seems to be asking „What is war in relation to man’s Being?”30 – he brings the reader closer to
„the man entangled-in-war, the man living war”31.
25 D. Hibberd, op. cit., p. 184.
26 Men Who March Away…, p. 132.
27 T. Sławek, „Dark Pits of War”: Wilfred Owen’s Poetry and the Hermeneutics of War, „Boundary 2”
1985‒1986, Vol. 14, No.1, p. 311.
28 A. Kędzierska, op. cit., p. 73.
29 Ibidem.
30 Sławek, op. cit., p. 311.
31 Ibidem.
In A Terre… Owen criticizes those who participate in the creation of propaganda that caused this man to lose his mental and physical health. He claims that glorious depictions of war have no place in poetry; medals, usually associated with valour and glory, become useless discs; decorative ribbons have no value. The author also uses a variety of literary techniques to highlight the soldier’s desperate situation and the animosity between his mind and body. He demonstrates how war utterly „shatters and dislocates the unity of the body”32. For instance, Owen stresses that the material which caused the man’s injury is now part of his body, prolonging his mental suffer- ing indefinitely. He also uses pararhyme to describe the man’s limbs – „Both arms […] – brutes / my fingers fidget like idle brats”, a stylistic device that would later become a key part of his major works.
The definition of this type of rhyme is now well known: „[I]nstead of changing the initial consonant while retaining the vowel sound as rhyme does (bold/cold), the con- sonantal framework is retained and the vowel changed (cold/called, killed/curled)”33, but in the first decades of the twentieth century, it was considered highly innovative.
Edmund Bluden, who first incorporated this technique, rather accurately claimed that
„the discovery of final assonances in place of rhyme may mark a new age in poetry”34. Perhaps he drew inspiration from Alexander Pope who, two centuries earlier, humor- ously criticises the commonplace nature of perfect rhymes in his Essay on Criticism35:
Where’er you find „the cooling Western breeze”, In the next line, it „whispers through the trees”:
If crystal streams „with pleasing murmur creep”
The reader’s threatened (not in vain) with ‘sleep’. (ll. 14‒17)
Pararhyme, a breath of fresh air, was quickly embraced by Owen due to its experi- mental nature. The stylistic device also appealed to the poet’s hesitant personality and was a more fitting means of conveying the ever-present degradation of values brought on by the war36. His experimentation resulted in a poem written entirely in pararhyming couplets, namely Strange Meeting37; „Owen’s efforts to find substitutes for rhyme – substitutes which, because of their unexpectedness, would enrich the verse – are best illustrated in Strange Meeting, perhaps the most powerfully projected of all war poems”38.
The poem begins with the speaker escaping battle and tumbling down a dark tunnel to an unknown land. Upon reaching this alien territory, the speaker notices encumbered
32 Ibidem, p. 315.
33 D. S. R. Welland, Half-Rhyme in Wilfred Owen: Its Derivation and Use, The Review of English Studies 1950, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 226.
34 Ibidem.
35 Ibidem.
36 Cf. ibidem, pp. 238‒239.
37 Men Who March Away…, p. 169.
38 A Treasury of Great Poems…, pp. 1173‒1176.
sleepers „[…] Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred”. This hellish realm is where the titular strange meeting takes place, as the speaker encounters one of the beings:
With a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
„Strange friend”, I said, „here is no cause to mourn”.
„None”, said that other, „save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the Word. (ll. 11‒18)
It is now clear that, after losing their lives on the battlefield, both men have been transported to a hellish afterlife. The speaker addresses the other being with the words „strange friend”, which signifies the awkward ties between the two soldiers who had most probably previously fought for opposing forces. „Whatever hope is yours / Was my life also” implies that their lives were somehow interconnected, per- haps it is a general statement on war – soldiers, separated by ideals, language and nationality, involuntarily become enemies, yet in essence these men are all similar in their goals and hopes. „I / Went hunting wild / After the wildest beauty in the World” – these lines suggest that the second speaker could in fact be identified as Owen himself – they bring to mind his youthful fascination with Keats.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now... (ll. 40‒44)
In the final lines of the poem, the soldiers are yet again described as former enemies. By placing both men in a setting resembling hell, Owen criticizes the attempts to portray the allied armies as morally superior He condemns, and simultaneously empathises with, all military forces equally. The scene of the killing stands as one of the most evo- cative in the poem – as the first speaker repeatedly stabs his prey, his face is devoid of emotion, inhuman. His frown induces a stiffening fear in his victim, who stares at his oppressor helplessly as his life is taken away from him. The final line is cut short, as if the poem were to continue; or perhaps to signify the eternal nature of the soldiers’ sleep.
„The hell where youth and laughter go”
Owen joined the British Army on the 21st of October 1915 and entered the aptly named Artists’ Rifles regiment – originally a Volunteer Corps for actual artists, which greatly impressed him39. During his time as a cadet he extended his knowledge of
39 Cf. D. Hibberd, op. cit., p. 208.
contemporary poetry. He was particularly interested in Harold Monro whose ironic verse, attempts at realism, belligerent attitude towards old men, and grief concerning the death of the young generation made his poetry highly unusual for 1914‒1540. To provide an example from Youth in Arms41:
Greybeards plotted. They were sad.
Death was in their wrinkled eyes.
At their tables, with their maps Plans and calculations, wise They all seemed; for well they knew How ungrudgingly Youth dies. (ll. 18‒23)
Owen’s famous Dulce et Decorum Est displays many of the traits characteristic of Monro’s verse – addressing the older generation as „my friend”, Owen expresses his anger through irony and scolds his elders for telling lies to children desperate for glory. His citation of Horace’s words: „Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is also ironic, Owen discredits these values and claims there is nothing good or right about the death of young men – all that remains after their demise is grief. Perhaps inspired by Monro’s direct, modern language, in Dulce et Decorum Est Owen successfully combines poetic descriptions with the straightforward language of soldiers:
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. (ll. 9‒14)
For instance, the panic-stricken soldier shouting „Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” would never describe his actions as „an ecstasy of fumbling”, or suffocation as „drowning under a sea of green” – the two styles of speech unite to form an unusual contrast.
Owen manages to accomplish a unique symbiosis between simple, direct language and articulate verse. Additionally, his lack of poetic hyperbole and attention to real- ism is evident in his depiction of the man’s death, devoid of any glory – „a random and futile death, far removed from any meaningful ‘action’ and whose memory offers no comfort or heroic reassurance”42.
In 1917, after experiencing a nerve-wracking incident, Owen was diagnosed as having shell-shock, which in turn led to his evacuation to England and subsequent admission to Craiglockhart War Hospital. His time at Craiglockhart was of pivotal importance in terms of its influence on his literary career. During this period Owen
40 Cf. ibidem, p. 213.
41 Ibidem.
42 P. Norgate, Wilfred Owen and the Soldier Poets, „The Review of English Studies” 1989, Vol. 40, No. 160, p. 521.
met many prominent authors such as Robert Graves, Arnold Bennet, H. G. Wells and Siegfried Sassoon. While at Craiglockhart and in the early part of 1918 Owen completed his literary transformation into the war poet he is remembered as to- day, experiencing one of the most creative periods in his life and writing many of his greatest works in rapid succession43. Sassoon’s influence on Owen’s poetry was particularly powerful. Perhaps most importantly the more experienced poet urged Owen to write as much as possible, to „sweat his guts out writing poetry”44, and quickly became a source of inspiration and motivation. Owen had a great deal of respect for the older poet – „With characteristic modesty Owen considered himself
»not worthy to light Sassooon’s pipe«”45 – and therefore must have valued his advice immensely. Sassoon’s influence, however, goes far beyond that point. In fact, the dif- ferent styles of handwriting on many of Owen’s original manuscripts reveal words and phrases directly altered by Sassoon. Additionally, Owen would often provide a selection of words or phrases that the more experienced poet could choose from and Sassoon would cross out the entries he deemed unsuitable46. Anthem for Doomed Youth47 displays how vital a part Sassoon played in the ongoing aesthetic growth and enrichment of Owen’s poetry. One of his key changes can be found in the title, which was originally supposed to be Anthem for Dead Youth, as can be seen in Owen’s initial drafts48. Sassoon’s word of choice, „doom,” featured in subsequent drafts of the poem49, is much less direct and far more ominous. The effect of this alteration is not only stylistic but also contextual, broadening the poem’s scope. The focus is moved from the present to the future, the young generation is destined to be doomed due to current affairs50 – „Owen’s poem begins to envisage the chaos of war as an unending condition of modern existence, every individual bearing somewhere […] its scars”51. As stated in the title, the poem, written in sonnet form, is an anthem, or, more pre- cisely, a lament for the dead. There are however no descriptions of glorious, heroic death – the first part of the poem demonstrates „the collision of Owen’s first-hand experience with this heroic rhetoric”52:
43 Cf. S. Lee, Wilfred Owen (1893‒1918) [in:] The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford, 1997.
44 In a letter to Leslie Gunston, 22 August 1917. See: e.g. The First World War Poetry Digital Archive [on-line:] http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/owen/letters.html [20.03.2015].
45 A Treasury of Great Poems…, pp. 1173‒76.
46 Cf. Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale, BBC One Documentary, 2007.
47 W. Owen, The Collected…, p. 44.
48 Cf. The First World War Poetry Digital Archive [on-line:] http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collec- tions/item/4647?CISOBOX=1&REC=4 [20.03.2015].
49 The First World War Poetry Digital Archive [on-line:] http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collec- tions/item/4544?CISOBOX=1&REC=3 [20.03.2015].
50 Cf. J. Stephenson, R. Waterhouse, Authorial Revision and Constraints on the Role of the Reader: Some Examples from Wilfred Owen, „Poetics Today” 1987, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 69.
51 P. Norgate, op. cit., pp. 523‒524.
52 Ibidem, p. 523.
– What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires. (ll. 1‒8)
Lines like „the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle / can patter out their hasty orisons” de- monstrate Owen’s ever-present, yet never before so pronounced and developed, abi- lity to blend alliteration, assonance and consonance with remarkable skill. His choice of geminated consonants further increases his success in reproducing the repetitive, roaring staccato of constant rifle fire. In the final couplet Owen personifies the ene- my’s weaponry, „demented choirs of wailing shells” appear to be the sole witness to the monstrous carnage on the battlefield. He also chooses to incorporate alliteration by repeating the phoneme /∫/, which resembles of the whistling, howling noise that can be heard during the projectiles’ descent. In addition to these literary techniques, the poet employs a great amount of imagery related to memorial service, both mili- tary (calling bugles) and religious (bells, prayers, mourning choirs), through which the bombardment is transformed into an awkward ceremony – a demented, bizarre funeral. By comparing the dying to butchered cattle, Owen ruthlessly criticizes the war as a gruesome celebration of mindless slaughter.
„Futility” – Owen’s poetic epitaph
Futility53, one of Owen’s final poems, continues the author’s quest to criticise the war, but, more importantly, it is an existential contemplation of life and can be seen as
„his own unplanned tragic epitaph”54. It is written in the form of an elegy for an un- named soldier who passed away on the battlefield:
Move him into the sun – Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it awoke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. (ll. 1‒7)
Owen’s use of language in this stanza evokes a mood of serenity, especially if compa- red to his cacophonous representations of the battlefield in, for instance, Anthem For Doomed Youth. The sun once woke the soldier with a gentle „touch”, it „whispered
53 Men Who March Away..., p. 110.
54 A Treasury of Great Poems…, pp. 1173-1176.
of fields unsown” even during battle, giving a sense of hope and beauty in complete contrast to the devastated surroundings. It is „kind” and „old”, unaffected by the futility that is characteristic of human life – nature is a passive, everlasting witness of the destruction wrought by mankind.
Think how it wakes the seeds, – Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved, – still warm, – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall? (ll. 8‒12)
Owen, returning to his Romantic roots, admires the power of nature, the power of the sun. If even a cold star can be turned into a planet teeming with life, then why is humanity incapable of restoring the life of one man – a task seemingly ef- fortless and minor in proportion. Though the man was alive moments ago, his „[…]
sides, / Full-nerved, –still warm […]”, all that remains is his corpse. The poet feels powerless and insignificant in the face of death, yet he desperately tries to conceive a means of reinstating life into the man’s body. Finally, Owen conveys his grief by asking – „Was it for this the clay grew tall?”. He cannot comprehend how human life, something so „deer-achieved” and unique, is not worth saving; how it can run its course and then turn to nothing so suddenly after reaching its peak. He is also expressing his anger at the war with newfound fervour – is this pointless slaughter, this „foul tornado,” to quote Owen’s imagery from 191455, all humanity can achieve after centuries of progress?
The poem ends with the following couplet: „– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil / To break earth’s sleep at all?”. Owen seems to be questioning the need for hu- man life – what is the point in leading such a paradoxical existence where life invari- ably leads to death? He is unable to reconcile the wondrous nature of life with the complete despair that accompanies its conclusion, which man often imposes upon himself. The poet was killed in action on the 4th of November 1918 and posthu- mously awarded the Military Cross for his leadership and bravery56. Futility, his final testament, seems to conclude that human existence is sometimes merciless and futile, but also exceedingly precious. Although at times bitter and highly critical, the most mature characteristic of Owen’s poetry is its pity. This message, simultaneously hope- ful and bleak, is key to understating the multi-faceted growth of his poetry.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Owen’s earliest works, inspired by Romantic and later Decadent po- etry, had a substantial impact on his writing style and poetic sensibility. Additionally, it is clear that many motifs (e.g. horrific faces) characteristic of Owen’s war poetry
55 W. Owen, The Collected..., p. 129.
56 Cf. S. Lee, op. cit.
emerged before his first experience of combat. Despite the war being a primary so- urce of inspiration, many of Owen’s influences had already been firmly established long before the armed conflict ensued. As regards Owen’s mature poetry; his war experience led to the most profound alterations in his compositions. However, his past influences are still visible in many works. The poet’s quest to contradict pro- -war propaganda led to horrific, matter-of-fact depictions of the battlefield, which, combined with the author’s poetic imagery, function as a compelling medium for conveying the harsh realities of war. Finally, the combination of profound humanity and existential despair featured in one of Owen’s final works, Futility, is key to un- derstating the multi-faceted growth of his poetry; it is here that Owen achieves the remarkable feat of combining poetic sensitivity with the ruthless cycle of life and death experienced on the battlefield.
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Summary
„Was it for this the clay grew tall?” Wilfred Owen’s Aesthetic Sensitivity in the Face of War and Violence The purpose of the article is to analyse the evolution of Wilfred Owen’s poetry; to compare Owen’s early works, written before his firsthand experience of combat and inspired by Romantic and, subsequently, Decadent poetry, with compositions written after his traumatic experiences on the battlefield; to document the clash, or rather distinctive fusion, of his growing aesthetic sensitivity and Romantic appreciation of nature with the horrifying experiences of trench warfare. The article concludes with an analysis of the poem Futility, which may be viewed as Owen’s final literary testament;
a simultaneously hopeful and bleak meditation on the nature of human existence.
!["O postawach autora osobowego w poemacie dygresyjnym", Andrzej Staniszewski, "Acta Universitatis Nicolai Copernici", Filologia Polska XV. Literatura, z.109 : [recenzja]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==)